Yáng Wénhuì 楊文會
Late-Qīng / early-Republican lay Buddhist reformer, publisher, and educator. Zì Rénshān 仁山 (most commonly used); hào Shēnliǔtáng zhǔrén 深柳堂主人 (“Master of the Deep-Willow Hall”), Rénshān jūshì 仁山居士. Native of Shíqí 石埭 (Ānhuī). Lifedates 1837/12/13 (Dàoguāng 17 / 11/16) – 1911/10/8 (Xīnhài 8/17), age 75.
The pivotal figure in the late-Qīng / early-Republican Chinese Buddhist revival. After an early career in civil administration — including periods as a diplomatic attaché in London (1878–1880 and 1886–1889) under Zēng Jìzé 曾紀澤 — he dedicated his mature life to the recovery of the Buddhist canonical heritage and to publishing its texts in accessible modern editions. Founded the Jīnlíng Kèjīng chù 金陵刻經處 (“Nanjing Buddhist Sutra-Engraving House”) in 1866 in Nánjīng, which over the following decades became the single most important Buddhist publishing enterprise in modern China. During his British years, Yáng collaborated with the Japanese Buddhist scholar Nanjō Bun’yū 南條文雄 to recover lost Chinese Buddhist texts from Japanese archives, reintroducing hundreds of titles (including the works of Kuījī 窺基 and much Huáyán material) that had been lost in China.
In 1908, late in his career, he founded the Jīnlíng Kèjīng chù Fóxué yánjiū huì 金陵刻經處佛學研究會 (literally, the Jīnlíng Buddhist Studies Society), which functioned as the first modern Buddhist institute in China. His students included Ōuyáng Jìngwú 歐陽竟無 (who would go on to found the Zhīnà Nèixué yuàn 支那內學院, the most important Yogācāra study centre of early-20th-century China), Tàixū 太虛 (the major reformist monk of the Republican period), and many other figures of the twentieth-century Chinese Buddhist intellectual renaissance. He is widely recognised as the “father of modern Chinese Buddhism.”
In the present catalog, relevant as the 1886 reprinter of the Zōng fàn KR6q0170, one of the thousands of Buddhist texts he returned to active circulation. For biographical material see Goldfuss (2001) and Welch (1968).